Shandong Province, Farmers' Specialized Cooperative Economic Organizations, Development Status, Problems And Suggestions

In October 2005, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee put forward the new task of building a new socialist countryside, and encourage and guide farmers to develop specialized cooperative economic organizations and raise the degree of organization, which regard it as an important part of building a new socialist countryside. The No.1 document of Central Committee in 2006, further emphasized "actively guiding and supporting peasants to develop professional cooperative economic organizations, accelerating the legislative process, and increasing support, establishing the credit, tax and registration system which contribute to cooperative economic organizations." In June and August 2006, the NPC Standing Committee twice reviewed the draft law on specialized cooperative economic organizations. This is a big action of "enlivening" the peasants in the background of constructing new socialist countryside, yet another indication of Central government's new ideas for rural development of "giving more, taking less, enlivening". The draft states for the first time that the legal status of Farmers' Specialized Cooperative Economic Organizations (FSCEO), and abolishes the management system of business unit in charge, and practices its registration management. In October 2006, the Farmer Specialized Cooperatives Act passed on the third consideration, as the end of the legislative process. That would mark the beginning of a healthy new era of rapid development of the China's FSCEO.Shandong Province, as China's major agricultural province, in recent years, has developed FSCEO rapidly, at the forefront of the whole country, which promotes the development of agricultural industrialization, increases organizational degree of agriculture, and plays a significant role on promoting a new socialist countryside. In early 2006, there have been 21000 standardized organizations, 4.6 million farmers, accounting for 22.1% of farmers in the province. In the Specialized production relatively developed counties, participating farmers is even more than a third which includes 4.85 million farmer households, accounting for 23.3% of the total number.To further guide and support the healthy development of FSCEO, the Shandong Provincial Committee of CPC and provincial government made a decision to speed up the development of FSCEO. In order to understand the development of FSCEO of Shandong Province comprehensively, to provide policy recommendations for its development, the author conducted a survey on the development of FSCEO in some counties and cities of the province, making use of some of the latest statistical data, comparing its development and policy with other...